PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE AFRICAN STAR

By ErinRua

CHAPTER 27

"Cor, mate, ye mind leanin' a bit more t' leeward?"

That complaint came from somewhere in the dark behind Will, but he paid it no heed while he tied off the last lashing that secured one of the boats on deck.  As he straightened he likewise ignored Gibbs' grimace of distaste.  However, he stood for an instant while the grizzled first mate brushed hastily at Will's back then plucked something off to flick it over the side.

The malodorous condition in which Will and Jack found themselves was the least of his frustrations.  Stink be damned, they were retreating from Sir John Biltmore and leaving Elizabeth behind.  Already canvas thudded overhead as sails caught the wind and he felt the Black Pearl beginning to move sluggishly beneath him.  With his jaw clenched Will strode towards Jack Sparrow at the rail.

"Well, Jack.  Jumping into a midden heap was a lovely idea.  I don't think I've ever known such a stink before.  What new and marvelous plans do you have up your sleeve?"

Sparrow pivoted to face him, eyes glinting in the moonlight.  "You're alive, mate.  You didn't specify that you wanted to remain sweet-smellin', too."

Jack turned and started walking aft, but Will stuck like glue.  "Fine, but you are making a new plan, right?  This is just to regroup and think up another strategy.  Right?"

"Strategy for what, Will?  Your lass is not there."

"She's here somewhere!  And those poor women -."

"Will."  Sparrow halted and faced him again, a stiff finger raised between them.  "One.  I am not prepared to invade Cuba with a single ship for the sake of any woman.  Two.  If there are sixty-two women needin' rescue, that is more than I've got crew on this ship.  How would I get sixty-two females to anywhere safe on earth without starvin' us all on short rations, inciting a mutiny, or gettin' sunk by someone like your Commodore Norrington?"

For a tense beat they stared at each other, Will's jaw set in lines as hard as the back of an ax.  "Then you're giving up.  Even the African Star, a diamond that is the envy of kings, is not enough to purchase your courage."

He flinched sharply as Sparrow's face was suddenly inches from his own, black eyes gleaming like frozen obsidian.  "You know nothing, boy."

The young blacksmith actually felt Sparrow's breath puff against his face, and then cool air wafted in as Jack spun away.  Underfoot the deck leaned as the Pearl took more of the wind towards the harbor mouth, and Will felt his guts seize into a cold, nauseous knot.

"Jack -."

He did not mean for his voice to croak like a cat with a hairball, but at least the other man stopped.

Though he spoke only to Sparrow's back, Will said very quietly, "Then put me ashore, Jack.  No matter if it means my death, I will not abandon Elizabeth here."

A moment, then Sparrow turned towards him again, his face inscrutable in the shadows.  What he might have said was lost, however, as a frantic shout rang out from aloft.

"Sail, ho!  SAIL, HO!  Good God - Captain!"

Will was not a jump behind as Jack sprang to the rail and the half moon revealed her secret.  From beyond the headland now ghosted a vast tower of pale sails, gliding inexorably into the harbor's mouth.  Tiny points of light were lanterns on the ship's deck, beneath which they knew scores of men stood ready for battle.  A grim vision of Royal Navy might, the HMS Dauntless seemed to march in from the dark sea like a leviathan, and in so doing cut off the Black Pearl's only route of escape.

Odd, how Will suddenly became aware that Time had stopped.  Seconds slowed and spiraled and narrowed down to this single moment, while a hundred guns crouched in the belly of that great ship, needing but a spark to end every hope he ever knew.  The clarity of his vision was terrifying; this was the death the Black Pearl would inevitably die.  This was the grim truth with which Jack Sparrow lived, and yet somehow found the courage to mock in his own barmy brand of defiance.

"Jack -."  Will's stomach had plunged straight into his bowels and he was surprised he still had any voice left.  "Whatever you do, I'll stand with you."

"Thank you, William."  Sparrow clapped Will's shoulder in an iron grip and his teeth glinted in the brightest, maddest smile Will had seen yet.  "Because we're going to dance with the devil."  In a ringing shout he then cried, "Mister Gibbs!  Load the guns, every man to his station.  Anamaria!  Hold our course as she bears!"

A queer silence gripped the Pearl as she slid though the black water and her crew scrambled to their quarters.  Not another voice was heard, only the creaks of a moving ship, the thudding of hasty feet and the rumble of cannons being drawn back for loading.

***

On board the Dauntless the tension was nearly tangible and the silence all but vibrated.  Commodore Norrington stood beside his helmsman in absolute stillness, his eyes fixed on the dark ship across the water.  He could see the long silhouette of her bowsprit shortening as she slowly turned towards them.

"What is he doing?"

The whispered question came from Lieutenant Gillette, with Lieutenant Groves standing slack-jawed beside him, but Norrington spared them neither glance nor reply.  What, indeed, would Mad Jack Sparrow do?

Groves watched the Pearl and shook his head in dismay.  "We have the clear advantage in size, guns, wind.  They are barely making headway.  What can Sparrow be thinking?"

Below decks the Dauntless' cannon crews crouched at their larboard guns, every piece primed and ready.  In the tops marines waited with loaded muskets and the warship slid further into the bay.

"Sir," said Gillette in a puzzled tone.  "Her gun ports are closed."

"So they are," Norrington replied.

"Sir, will we -."

Glancing at them with an unexpected surge of fondness, Norrington gave the two young men a small smile.  "Please go to your stations, gentlemen.  Await my orders.  And may God keep you."

"God keep you, sir," they both echoed and saluted before scrambling away.

Water curled in small silver lines along the pirate ship's hull, slowly drawing the curve of her turn and then fading to gleaming black.  Groves had spoken truly when noting that the Dauntless had the advantage, whilst the Pearl scarcely moved faster than a man could jog.  With the sea wind at her back the Dauntless could easily drive straight in to hammer the Pearl with a full broadside, and then turn to take the stern right out of her.  Yet for Sparrow there was no room to run within the confines of this bay, no sea upon which to manoeuvre.  Surely the pirate captain could see that.  Then coldness settled into Norrington's stomach as he realized that perhaps Sparrow had no intentions of surviving this encounter, if the hangman was the only other prospect he saw.

The two ships continued moving, the Black Pearl barely creeping while the Dauntless surged powerfully to meet her.  Norrington watched almost without breathing as the distance between them steadily shortened.  Now the Pearl was within easy range of the warship's bow-chasers, needing only a twitch of the helm to turn a full broadside to bear.  The ports remained closed along the pirate ship's hull, but they could be opened in an instant and he must presume her guns were as ready as his own.  She turned - just slightly - bearing a point away from the oncoming Dauntless.  It was then he realized that the Pearl was losing her wind, that her yards had turned so that the sails spilled empty.  Jack Sparrow was making his stand.

"Damn you, Sparrow … your audacity may kill us all."

Commodore Norrington was no stranger to war or the deadly duels of great ships.  Yet he was discovering how very queer it was to know the man on that other deck, to be able to envision his face and imagine his voice.  Here, what was this?  A sudden light flared at the Black Pearl's bows, a lantern uncovered and now swinging in a slow arc at the side.

"Hold your positions!" Norrington shouted.

Silence.  He heard only the creak of rigging, the whispered gurgle of water past the hull.  A sudden clang startled him until his brain recognized the measured cadence of the ship's bell.  Four sets of two strikes, eight bells.  Midnight.  The Black Pearl was now dead under the Dauntless' guns.

"Commodore Norrington!"  The thin shout drifted across the water, but there was no mistaking the jovial volume behind those tones.  "Might I have a word with you, sir?"

The lantern still waved and now Norrington dimly made out several figures on the Pearl's foredeck.  Thoughts hurtled through his head almost too quickly to grasp, desperately juggling the pieces of the puzzle that was Jack Sparrow.  A sudden scrambling of feet materialized into a breathless midshipman, who thrust a speaking cone into Norrington's hands.

Glancing at the boy's white face, Norrington took the cone, but lowered it as he spoke quietly once again to the ship across the water.  "Are you seeking suicide, Sparrow?  Or are you trying to engineer an escape?"

Thus resolved, he drew a deep breath, lifted the cone and hoped by all that was holy that he was not making a mistake.

"Captain Sparrow!  Do you wish to speak of surrender?"

A pause, then the jolly reply drifted back.  "Surrender?  I wouldn't know what to do with a surrendered ship-of-the-line!"

Norrington ground his teeth at this deliberate misunderstanding, but Sparrow was not through.

"How about a little parlay, Commodore?  A gentleman's discussion?"

At times like this the quarterdeck seemed so much a world apart.  There was no one with whom Norrington could consult; no wiser mind to advise him.  He was the governing power on this ship and every decision he made affected scores of lives.  Were it any other pirate the Dauntless' guns would have fired already - and that realization took the commodore by surprise.

What bizarre sort of trust could he possibly imagine dwelt in a madman like Jack Sparrow?  Or was the pirate ship possibly crippled from its earlier exchange with the cannons ashore?  Sparrow might be pulling a bluff that he was too damaged to back up - but in the dark Norrington of course could not know.  Inhaling deeply he lifted the cone before his mouth again.

"Come across.  You, and four men to row a boat."

Another long pause, during which Norrington caught his bo'sun's eye, nodded and pointed to the sails.  The man touched his forelock and hastened away.  Sailors manned the sheets and the great warship began to slow.

"Fair enough," echoed the disembodied reply.  "We shall stand as we are.  I'll be over directly."

In the long moments that followed Norrington found himself inordinately drawn to the idea of prayer.  Either Sparrow had some devious plan in mind, with the Black Pearl and the Dauntless both facing each other having no wind and equal lack of maneuverability, or …  The young commodore could not think of a sufficient "or" and once again contemplated praying.  Perhaps he could take consolation in knowing that, if he were the architect of his own ship's demise, he could always go down with her and avoid the subsequent disgrace.

Soon the wooden thunk of oars sounded below and sailors dropped a rope ladder over the side.  Marines stood watchfully by with fixed bayonets.  No sooner did a tousled, red-clothed head appear at the rail than two burly men seized the newcomer's arms and hoisted him bodily over and onto the deck.

"Ere, now!" Sparrow yelped, scowling to either side as rough hands frisked him, seizing his sword and the pistol from his belt.  "No need for that!  Oh!  Commodore."  Instantly his white and gold teeth appeared in an ingratiating.  "Lovely night, ennit?  How'd your little parlay with the Spaniards go, anyhow?"

"Without a hitch," Norrington replied coolly.  "I advised Captain Herrera as to your identity and suggested that he and his seventy-four guns might wish to make your acquaintance sometime very soon."  Then his composure faltered as an errant breeze passed.  "Good heavens, what is that smell?"

"Wot's that?  Oh."  Sparrow lifted an arm, sniffed loudly then grinned.  "I took a short cut, as it were."

By way of what Norrington did not want to know.  The commodore was not surprised to see the next man over the rail and into custody was Will Turner.  He stifled a mental wince as he noted the blacksmith also had to be relieved of his sword and his handsome young face was set in a stubborn mien Norrington knew only too well.

Three other pirates also appeared and came instantly under the muzzles of the marines' muskets.  One pirate wore a bandage around his blond, shaggy head.  One was huge, shave-headed and built like a meat-house.  The third was even more enormous, with one arm in bandages and he offered his captors a perfectly ugly grin.  The marines edged warily back and gave themselves a little more room.

"So," said Norrington, and took measured steps to face his two most interesting captives.  Duty first, he reminded himself.  Duty and the lives of his crew.  "We seem to have a bit of a quandary, here.  But whatever happens, Captain Sparrow, know that the Black Pearl is herewith deprived of her commander, and anything your men do will be without your clever wit.  If you commit the least indiscretion I will not hesitate to sink her where she stands, and your body will hang from the yardarm at sunup."

Sparrow blinked wide eyes.  "That is very good, Commodore," he approved, and tapped in the air as if making a notation.  "I am impressed.  You 'ave a knack for nice, gruesome threats.  But your delivery could use a bit of work."  He patted ringed fingers against his belly.  "Project your voice from the stomach.  Makes it even more convincing."

Young Turner seemed to find the tips of his shoes suddenly fascinating, and Norrington clung sternly to his composure as he reminded himself with whom he spoke.

"So long as the message is understood.  Now, pray tell why we are having this … parlay?"  He permitted himself a tiny, grim smile.  "It would appear you attempted to crack a nut that was too big for you."

"A strategic -."

Sparrow's attempt to wave off the comment earned him a corrective jerk from the marines beside him, wherewith he shot another glare at his captors.  They let go at Norrington's nod and Sparrow vigorously dusted off his sleeves. 

"A strategic miscalculation was all," he continued briskly.  "Our assessment of his numbers was a little off.  But I can tell you that their morale is low and they are driven more by fear of their master than love for 'im.  It would take little to break them completely.  With a proper show of force I should think they would collapse like a paper castle, especially if they are offered a fair surrender."

Norrington's stare was positively glacial as he replied.  "What in heaven's name are you talking about, and why are you talking about it?  This is Cuba.  We are a British naval vessel.  You are a pirate.  I fail to see the linking factors anywhere amongst your babble."

"Slaves," said Will Turner suddenly.  His brown eyes stared back sharply as daggers as Norrington's attention swung to him.  "Sixty-two women that Sir John Biltmore holds at this very moment, locked in his stable like beasts.  He has been collecting them for months."

The silence shimmered, then Norrington said softly, "And you know this how?"

"I spoke to one of them.  I heard their voices!"

"I see."  Actually, Norrington was not seeing much of anything that made sense, but he was not about to let these two know that.  "What of Miss Swann?"

Turner's resolve visibly crumbled and his shoulders slumped. "She escaped when they dropped anchor here.  She's out somewhere in the jungle."

"Leaving sixty two of her fellow sufferers behind.  Yet you failed to find her or free any of them in your quest for plunder."

"We didn't have time!"

"Or your Captain Sparrow did not allow time.  Tell me, Sparrow, why are you here?"

"Business opportunities," Sparrow replied with an artificial smile.

"Ah."

Turner leaped instantly into the breech.  "Why are you here, Commodore?  Last I heard these were not British waters."

Containing his temper behind the uniform, Norrington's brow furrowed slightly as he debated his response.  "Sir John's first mate, Thomas Fry, is wanted for kidnapping and murder.  It had been my intent -."  He leveled a scathing look at Jack's instant expression of innocence.  "To apprehend him on the open sea and thus have cause to search the Royal Venture and free Miss Swann.  You have very nicely spoilt that plan, haven't you, Sparrow?"

"Honestly, Commodore."  Jack simpered foolishly.  "You give me entirely too much credit."

"I give you all the blame," Norrington corrected, mouth tightening as he enunciated each word.  "And now you have the gall to ask me to repair your mistakes."

"No!" cried Will.  "We're asking you to help us put an end to Sir John's dastardly schemes."  His white teeth clenched as he switched to open pleading.  "For the love of God, Commodore, we cannot leave them there!  He will sell them all as slaves!  Please, I promised them we'd be back!"

Drawing a long, deep breath, Norrington turned and walked several paces away.  Behind him Turner cried angrily, "Commodore, you must do something!  How can the Royal Navy claim any honor at all, if you can turn away from this?  He flew false colors and all but fed you to the Spaniards!"

The commodore exhaled slowly and stared towards the black shoreline.  There seemed a haze of smoke under the stars and a dull glow that could have been small fires beyond the profile of a heavy wall.  Sir John Biltmore's mysterious estate.  The centerpiece of all his endeavors, legal or illegal.  Furious did not begin to describe Norrington's state of mind that matters had come to this pass.

Pivoting sharply, he snapped, "Sparrow, if this is some depraved trick to win your freedom, I swear to you I will make your death my life's work!"

But Jack simply looked back at him, his dark eyes pools of shadow in the lamplight.  Quietly he said, "Even I am not so base as that, Commodore.  Do what you will with me … but those lasses do not deserve the torment of slavery."

Will stood beside Jack with an expression so alike that they might have been bookends, and Norrington wished fervently that he could read the truth behind even one of them.

"You are a pirate, Sparrow.  You do nothing without recompense.  What is in this for you?"

With a languid shrug, Jack replied, "Nothing for me.  But for the Pearl …" A slow, sly grin grew across his face one gold tooth at a time.  "She goes free."

"I knew it!"

Sparrow shrugged blithely.  "That's one alternative."  Then he ignored the rattle of aimed muskets as he swayed three paces closer to stand inches from Norrington's face.  In a soft voice pitched only for the commodore's ears he purred, "Or the Pearl and the Dauntless can stand out here, go to guns and blast each other to smithereens. … In which case the Pearl will be sunk, but the Dauntless, I can promise you, will be hurtin'."

The pirate's black stare seemed to be probing for Norrington's very thoughts, as he smiled and gently continued. "Now … would you rather be the hero that put an end to John Biltmore's ring of white slavery?  Quite a feather in your cap, to be hailed as the rescuer of three-score-and-two innocent young damsels from the clutches of a tyrant."

His fingers delicately plucked verbal images from the air as he bared his teeth in a smile that was no smile at all.  "Or would you rather be remembered as the man whose thirst for the glory of sinkin' Jack Sparrow reduced 'is own ship to a bloody shambles, unfit for rescuin' all those poor, mistreated ladies?"

Norrington's breath almost whistled through tight nostrils as he stared at the sly dark face before him.  It took all his self-control not to drive a fist into it.

Almost choking on his fury, he hissed, "You are blackmailing me, sir."

"No, Commodore."  Sparrow eased back a half-pace.  "I am simply showin' you the options."

Eyes narrowed, Norrington said lowly, "I do not need the advice of a pirate to understand my options." 

"Of course you don't.  But that's enough of the messy stuff, don't you think?"  Bringing both palms together he smiled at Norrington earnestly.  "It's all really quite simple."

As Will watched them both with beseeching eyes, Jack hesitated, keenly observing the turmoil of emotions that flickered in the commodore's gaze.  "Ask yourself, mate.  Which is the more worthy course?  Pride, or humanity?"

***

TBC …

A/N: More is coming very soon - please don't hurt me! - Oh, and don't worry, Elizabeth will be back.  Definitely.  Won't be able to miss her.  Heh heh heh.

P.S.  Someone asked if the plural of "cannon" should be "cannon."  I have seen it both ways, with and without an "s" on the end.  I'm honestly not altogether certain if without is correct, but … I'm running with it.  Thank you very much for asking, though, as I certainly do make mistakes!